Most conventional communications networks today, particularly existing telephone networks, provide a calling party with an audible ringback signal when an intended called network address or station line is idle and a busy signal when the intended called network address or station line is already in use (i.e., the telephone or other device at the called network address is being used). Most conventional communications networks also provide a calling party with an audible ringback signal when an intended called station or network address is out of order, unassigned, outside the network calling area, or otherwise unavailable or unreachable. Conventional networks may also provide a calling party with an audible dial tone signal when the telephone or other device at the calling station signals the network that they wish to initiate a call or network communication and a line is available. Most conventional communications networks today, particularly existing telephone networks, also provide advanced features, such as call waiting. The call waiting feature allows a station or device already connected to another station or device to temporarily disconnect from a first call and receive a second incoming call, and then switch between the calling parties.
For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,557,658, 5,428,670, and 5,321,740 to Gregorek et al., incorporated herein by reference, disclose the selective modification or replacement of at least a portion of a call progress signal, including the conventional aforementioned ringback signal, dial tone, busy signal, call waiting signal, and call waiting idle time, with prerecorded announcements and/or audio/video programming. These announcements and/or programming provide more information to a calling party. The replacement announcements and tones can be tailored to a specific calling party and can be associated with a calling party's unique network address or telephone number.
Custom ringback announcements allow for an additional level of flexibility and personalization of a user's communications network service. To customize the system, a user of a replacement ringback system, the network provider, or a third party might wish to deliver, for example, audio/video programming, music, interactive games, jokes, personalized messages, or informational messages to a calling party to supplement and/or replace the conventional ringback tones played to the calling party. Furthermore, replacement content can be customized for a specific calling party or group of calling parties. The replacement ringback system offers a convenient and simple way to extend a caller's communication experience and takes advantage of a previously unutilized call transmission period.
In addition, replacement ringback tones and announcements offer almost limitless applications in the marketing industry. Typically, a caller experiences a rather large amount of unused idle time when waiting for a called party to answer his or her telephone. A caller may also be put on hold for several minutes while the called party answers another inbound call (e.g., a called party may place an initial caller on call-waiting or hold to answer a second inbound call). Since ringback tones can be played to all parties, regardless of the called party's or calling party's own carrier or calling transmission means (i.e., whether the caller is calling from a wireless link or land line, etc.), replacement ringback tones are an ideal medium for advertising. Substantial revenue can be gained by taking advantage of this idle time to deliver advertisements pertaining to consumer goods, products, services, etc. provided by a particular corporation or individual. Further, since communication devices are virtually ubiquitous and universally used, ringback tones have the potential to reach a large, targeted audience very quickly and efficiently. For example, businesses may use replacement ringback tones to deliver company slogans, jingles, and promotions to increase exposure and publicity.
As the adoption of the technology identified in the above-referenced application is emerging, certain drawbacks in the functionality of the application are arising. For example, many users become frustrated or confused when they hear custom replacement ringback content. These callers may prematurely terminate a call thinking they have reached an incorrect number. In addition, in many instances the replacement ringback announcements may be configured to be delivered to calling parties based on global rules or criteria (e.g., time-based rules or geographic area (area-code) based rules). Many times, the replacement ringback content is inappropriate for a caller even though the caller matched some user or system defined criteria. As well as potentially being inappropriate, the replacement content to be delivered to a caller may be offensive, distasteful, or otherwise unwanted by the caller. Methods for selectively screening programming material are known in the art. For example, a material content signal may be added or incorporated into programming material as it is transmitted to a receiver. The receiver is then equipped with program material screening devices capable of detecting the material content signal and preventing receipt of the program material. It would be advantageous, however, if a user of a communications station, the network provider, or a third party, could configure a system to selectively block or filter ringback and other call signals delivered from called parties to the user's communications station without the use of an additional material content signal. This would be useful to prevent unsolicited, undesired, or offensive call signals.
In addition, conventional ringback replacement systems are typically limited to delivering announcements as standard ringback signals (i.e. the announcements are delivered to a calling station from a called station or network peripheral while the station is attempting to establish a connection with the called station). There are, however, many other times when it would be beneficial to deliver announcements from the communications network to a communications station. Since typical communications stations are idle for the majority of each day while no calls are being placed or received, it would be beneficial to utilize this unused idle time to deliver custom call signals (e.g., advertisements, music, video, sound effects, etc.) to entertain, inform, or educate the user.
There are also other times when it might be advantageous to deliver custom call signals to communications stations. A typical communications station remains idle while a user is inputting a network address to be called or dialed. Traditional ringback replacement systems cannot deliver call signals and announcements during this time. However, this time period accounts for a large percentage of the unused idle time experienced by a communications station. It would be advantageous if calling stations could also receive and display announcements while inputting or dialing a network address.
It would be advantageous if a user of a communications network could access a simple system for establishing custom announcements to be delivered to the user's own communications device. It would also be beneficial if this system could deliver announcements to a communications station while the station is idle, being used to input a network address, as a replacement ringback signal, or at any other convenient time. It would further be advantageous if the system included functionality for selectively blocking or filtering unwanted ringback signals destined for a user's own communications station without the need for incorporating a separate material content signal into the announcement. Thus a seamless system is needed that may be configured directly from the communications network, a user's handset or station, or a third party location, for delivering and/or blocking announcements delivered to a user's communications station.